Found Sound 2004

Each year, at the height of the post-holiday comedown, Pitchfork issues a new installment of Found Sound . A more relaxed counterpart to our massively labor-intensive year-end lists, it allows our staff the opportunity to write about older records they discovered in the preceding year-- many of which meant as much to them as any record that qualified for our proper top 50. These albums may not be easy to track down, but we assure you they're worth seeking out.

African Music Machine: : Black Water Gold [Soul Power; 1972] African Music Machine weren't actually African but forged in the musical fire of New Orleans as the house band for the Jewel and Paula labels. AMM were never able to break out on their own like fellow session kings the Meters, MGs, or Bar-Kays, but they played a smoldering, heavy brand of funk under the direction of bassist Louis Villery. Independently, they only managed enough singles to fill this album; it's a shame that's all they left behind, because their smoky gumbo is extra chunky. Focused like a laser beam on the hard grooves, it's not too heavy on melody-- but neither was James Brown, so what are we complaining about? The Machine reunited a few years ago and cut another album but the raw, rough-and-tumble material on this one is still the place to go. --Joe Tangari

Afro Super-Feelings led by Segun Okeji: Afro Super-Feelings [Comet/Awoko; 1970; r: 2001; Soul Patrol] Good goddamn. Who is Segun Okeji and why is nobody talking about him? This album consists of two ridiculously hot side-long jams. "Afro Super-Feelings in Disco" is a just bleeding insane pile of smoking groove kicked off by some nasty sax skronk from Okeji and buoyed by sick drumming from a guy credited only as "Tunde." "You listen to the sound of the Feelings/ And dance to the feeling of the sound" sings Okeji, and who can argue with that? The other song, "I Like Woman", is a funky, mid-tempo slow-burner in the Fela mold. It's led by Okeji's wandering sax-- and, based on these horn arrangements, I suspect Okeji took a lot of his inspiration from the king of Afrobeat. Fela is good company to keep though, and Okeji's take on Afrobeat is symphonic in scope and marvelously kinetic. My copy is a crisply mastered 2001 vinyl reissue by France's Soul Patrol label that doesn't bother to mention what year it was recorded or released (the Comet/Awoko address is in Lagos, so I'm assuming Okeji is Nigerian), but those are just ancillary details. If you can find it, definitely dance to this. --Joe Tangari

Agincourt: Fly Away [Merlin; 1970; r: Acme Gramophone; 2002] Originals of this private press 1970 UK folk rarity have been known to fetch outrageous sums at auction, so if you've been sitting on an old copy consider yourself wealthy. Though not the masterpiece that justifies those hefty £1,500 price tags, Fly Away contains many sublime moments as Agincourt balance their windswept homespun folk with the precariously whimsical psych-pop of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett-era singles. Expertly blending male and female vocals with plenty of acoustic guitar, piano, and lightly-brushed drums, songs like the gorgeous opener "When I Awoke" or "Dawn" expertly capture those wistful, autumnal moments that exist between dreaming and waking. Meanwhile, bouncier tracks like "Get Together" or the organ-driven instrumental "Barn Owl Blues" are tinged with such a carefree, swankadelic glint that they sound as if they might be castaways from one of the Mondo Morricone comps. Lyrical dippiness is thankfully kept to a minimum, and the whole thing comes together like a fine kidney pie, unless you consider the frequent presence of flute to be a dealbreaker. --Matthew Murphy

All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors: Turning Into Small [Gern Blandstren; 1998] If you're not comparing them to My Bloody Valentine, you're not being honest, but the good news is that these New Jersey shoegazers compare quite favorably. The guitars and keyboards coalesce into surging balls of texture, vocals appropriately buried and incomprehensible, but catchy nonetheless. The guitars of "Your Imagination" smear and quiver in a cavern of reverb, "Puzzled Into Pieces" checks the band into a rest home for malfunctioning robots, "In Between and After" grooves through massive clouds of twitchy synth and melodic Moog lines, and "Snowflake Eye" casts male/female harmonies into a tangled forest of ominous synths and earth-shaking drums. The songs thicken and thin hypnotically, building to overwhelming climaxes, and the whole album has the effect of a riptide, pulling you under and dragging you into its violently beautiful world. The only better stateside shoegaze album I can even think of is 7% Solution's All About Satellites & Spaceships . --Joe Tangari

Ballroom: "Through the Day" and "Take It" b/w: "Wasting Inside", "Let Go", "Too Much Too Soon", "Hold On" [Mother; 1998] Did you know U2 had a record label? I didn't until I went searching for some information on Ballroom after impulsively salvaging these two singles from a godforsaken cardboard box in a used book store. Their affiliation with Mother suggests they were Irish, but these guys did Britpop in the grand, sweeping post-Smiths tradition, with a singer in Gary Prosser who belts triumphantly in his smooth, crooning tenor no matter what's being thrown in his face. "Through the Day" is majestic and covered in buzzing e-bow, while "Take It" is a frantic, expertly drummed raver that seems to be about censorship, albeit vaguely. The four B-sides are gorgeous, fragile pieces of sensuous, nocturnal pop that feel good enough to be at least album cuts, if not A-sides. Their lone full-length, Day After Day , is going for $120 at Look & Listen, so there's a good chance these six songs are all the Ballroom I'll ever hear. That's okay-- played together, they create their own, insular world. --Joe Tangari

Baris Manco: 2023 [Yavuz Plak; 1975] Besides bearing some truly bewildering cover art, Baris Manco's 2023 must be the least convincing prophetical concept album in recent memory. It seems unlikely that the next 18 years will produce tumultuous Martian wars and effervescent psych-nymphs. Regardless, this bizarre foray into ambient prog demolished Turkish pop star Manco's career, even as it ambitiously attempted to inaugurate a new era of intellectual electronic meditation. 2023 is a testament to how far Manco was from his professed goal: Instead of relaxation, the album makes for some of the tightest grooves of 1970's ambiance (which may not seem like a particularly impressive achievement). Frail folk tunes are slathered in deep, make-out bass, while spiraling orchestras ride atop early Korg keyboards, kraut-rock percussion, and klezmer improv. Like all Turkish rock, there's a few indulgent interludes, but it's completely worth it for the exotic (and often comedic) skronking electronic funk that anchors the entire album. Be forewarned: The ornithological field recordings are a bit much. Finish Manco's trilogy with his later (and less outrageous) pieces, 2024 and 2025 -- Alex Linhardt

Jorge Ben: Africa Brasil [Samba & Soul; 1976] One of Brazilian popular music's leading lights throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, Jorge Ben doesn't have the cred-multiplying imprisonment backstory of Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso, but he created music just as boldly innovative and colossal. Africa Brasil 's title can be interpreted as a sort of manifesto, as Ben fearlessly straddles the Atlantic, wedding Afro-beat and funk to bossa nova and MPB soul with deft ease. "Ponta de Lanca Africano" ("Tip of the African Spear") opens things with massive choral funk, and the scratching wah and swaying rhythm of "Meus Filhos, Meu Tesouro" ("My Children, My Treasure") are insanely breathtaking. I used to hate talking drums before I heard this record, but my mind was changed about thirty seconds into "Taj Mahal," a song that rolls like Sergio Mendes in hyperspace. Easily one of the best records of the 70s, I can't believe I missed out on it for so long. --Joe Tangari

Blitzen Trapper: Blitzen Trapper [CD Baby; 2003] The bass player (stand-up, naturally) for Portland, Oregon's Blitzen Trapper once described their sound as Neil Young meets Pink Floyd, but that's only half the story. "Freak-pop" might be a better descriptor, particularly given the parlance of our times. Sure, an off-kilter blend of stoned country-rock and spazzy neo-psych weaves into focus amid the glassy-eyed twang of tracks like "Texaco" and "Whiskey Kisser". But Blitzen Trapper are far quirkier, delving into everything from cracked indie lounge a la Pavement's "5+4=Unity" ("Trigga Finga") to hook-laden thrash-pop straight off Blur's 1997 self-titled effort ("The All Girl Team"). Woo-hoo, indeed. Remember Beck before his career devolved into magazine-pleasing genre exercises? These guys have the same bent, rustic perspective on popcraft, and a heap of ambition. There's no telling where 2004 release Field Rexx would have placed in my Top 50 if I'd heard it soon enough, but this debut is a fine introduction. --Marc Hogan

Dan Bryk: Lover's Leap [Scratchie; 2000] It's no small feat to simultaneously evoke Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, They Might Be Giants, and Momus, but Canadian songwriter Dan Bryk pulls it off with style and wit. Bryk has three assets that help his classic piano-man style find purchase in this cynical age: A fatally gorgeous and tactfully deployed falsetto, a minutely specific worldview, and a dash of lo-fi indie rockery to deflate accusations of retrofetish. Bryk deftly slaloms between the romantic and sardonic in Lover's Leap 's lovely ballad "Memo to Myself": "We lay together for what seemed like hours/ You probably think that we touched souls/ All I did was touch you underneath your blouse." Elsewhere, we find a power-pop ode to Bryk's childhood geek icon, the computer programmer Mark Turmell; a sweetly ominous meditation on child molestation ("He did enough to tell me not to tell"); a rock ode to zaftig women ("I need a chunky girl/ The kind who's just my size"); and a variety of songs that revel in unfettered romantic bitterness. Bryk-- overweight, jaded, banal, spiteful, and maudlin-- somehow manages to turn these liabilities into a sparkling pop palimpsest. --Brian Howe

Capsize 7: Recline and Go EP [Hep-Cat; 1995] Capsize 7 is better known for their Mephisto LP than for Recline and Go (with which it shares a song, the spring-wound proto-punk anthem "Pong"), but this EP best epitomizes their sleek, powerful essence. The art that accompanies the liner notes depicts an arc of flame leaping from a recliner, an apt visual expression of music that consistently foiled listener inertia. While Capsize 7 was part of the same 1990s Chapel Hill indie rock boom that birthed Archers of Loaf, Superchunk, and Polvo, they didn't stick around long enough to garner their share of the hype, even though they were just as salient. Capsize 7 blended Archers's fractured power-pop and Polvo's baroque guitar shapes with Slint's churning rawness, creating prickly, streamlined melodies that simmered diabolically, then surged into massive sing-along choruses. "Clinger" stands as one of the most galvanizing, distinct songs Chapel Hill has ever produced, and while my beloved Archers and Superchunk records are mostly gathering dust, Recline and Go still makes my blood boil, and puts Capsize 7 in competition with Pipe for (deep breath) the Best Defunct Chapel Hill Rock Band Who Didn't Get Enough Props. --Brian Howe

Cardiac Arrest: "A Bus for A Bus On A Bus" [Tortch; 1979] Before they were the obscure, slept-on (except by Damon Albarn) British prog-punk band Cardiacs, Cardiac Arrest were an even more obscure, slept-on prog-post-punk band. This was their debut single, and gets my vote as the greatest anime theme song never reminisced about by 1980s American brats or regular Japanese ones. It's got it all: crazy speed, angular, super-powered riffs, unintelligible lyrics, lots of little sections and parts-- just like transforming robots! Alas, I don't think this has ever been issued on CD, so you're going to have to look extra hard to hear it. However, when the thrills are this good, stuff is worth it. --Dominique Leone

Cloud Cult: They Live on the Sun [Earthology; 2003] Cloud Cult is the kind of band Pitchfork should have embraced two years ago-- with the release of this record. The brainchild of Minnesota singer-songwriter and home recordist Craig Minowa, They Live on the Sun is a sweeping indie epic. Minowa's pinched, quavering vocals would slide comfortably between Isaac Brock and a mature Conor Oberst. His arrangements feature clinky, out-of-tune pianos (see "Fairy Tale", available on the group's website) and a cellist, Sarah Young, a full year ahead of a certain The New York Times "flavor of the month."

At times, the guitars are pure Built to Spill-- inexplicably still kept like a secret. But it's Minowa's accomplished songcraft that make this album so rewarding, even as it swells to encompass straight-ahead indie rock, freeform abstraction (on a song called "Three Times a Lady", no less), cacophonous tear-jerkers, and samples from 1950s General Motors movies. A certain type of cynic will attribute this record's local alternative press plaudits to Minowa's tragic backstory: His infant son, Kaidin, died unexpectedly one night, and his wife moved out soon after. Poppycock. Terrible things happen every day, but records this casually monumental are rare indeed. --Marc Hogan

Crass: Penis Envy [Crass Records; 1981] Crass's influence can be discerned in modern bands as diverse as Life without Buildings and Le Tigre; their 1981 masterpiece, Penis Envy , scans over Public Image Ltd.'s technophobic soundscapes and stream-of-consciousness poetics with fizzy punk and a radical feminist sensibility. It's P-punk through and through, and the "p" might stand for peace, pogo, pop(ulist), proto, post, progressive, paranoid, passionate, phallophobic, phenomenally phun, and phemale.

Here the men of Crass shut up and let the women, Eve Libertine and Joy deVivre, have the full spotlight, to subvert the dominant paradigm with a morass of tape loops, off-kilter percussion, sprawling word collages and endgame alienation. From the chirrups of "I've got 5-4-3-2-1, I've got a red pair of high heels on" on "Bata Motel" to the "System, system, system" mantra of "Systematic Death", this is an album of repetitions and permutations and freewheeling, gender-inequality-bemoaning, psychosexual poetics. Penis Envy is more subtle, thoughtful, and musically adventurous than your typical Reagan-era screed. It taps into such deep stores of eschatological dread you'd think Babylon was already toppling, and maybe it was: Apocalypse always seemed just around the bend, there at the end of the world. --Brian Howe

Failure: Fantastic Planet [Slash/Warner Bros.; 1996] Imagine, if you will, a world where radio listeners took to Kurt Cobain's pop socky in lieu of Eddie Vedder's dead man's croon, a world where Staind and Creed took their cues from "Big Bang Baby" and not "Man in the Box", where the Loud Family opened for Soundgarden on their Superunkown tour and blew all the little Jimmys away. Maybe in such a place, an overblown, cryptic, catchy-as-catchy-can 17-track behemoth like Fantastic Planet would be more than just fodder for the "We'll Pay You To Take This" bin. In 2004, I found a happy new copy of this record at my local Borders, adorned with a little sticker proudly displaying the perfect rating (five fingers!) this album received from Alternative Press back in 1996. I'm thinking someone at Warner Bros. is taking the piss, trying to see if they can sucker the mallpunk Alt.Press demographic into dropping a 10-spot for this befuddling confluence of twinkly segues and overdriven candy-coated sludge. Some of you might have heard the, um, hit "Stuck on You", Failure's brilliantly stupid song about brilliantly stupid songs. I'm of a mind to think that it's the worst song on the album, but then that means a song containing the words "Sergeant Politeness/ Caress my ego" is actually better, which you might not agree with. But don't go sweating the small stuff. An album this big on songs and sonics is better enjoyed as the blockbuster it could have been. --David Raposa

Bill Fay: From The Bottom Of An Old Grandfather Clock [recorded: 1966-70; Wooden Hill; 2004] Best known for Wilco's recurring cover of his stately fight song, "Be Not So Fearful", the English singer-songwriter Bill Fay ought to be a musical giant. When mentioned at all, he's grouped with J.D. Salinger due to his disappearance from the music business in 1972; but unlike Holden's daddy, he's still very much a productive, albeit outside participant. (Durtro/Jnana are releasing a collection of Fay's unreleased studio recordings from the 1970s and 80s at the end of this month.) Fay recorded two proper albums for Decca in the early 70s (reissued in the 90s by now defunct See For Miles), but I prefer these 25 stripped-down demos from 1966-1970, accompanied by one whispery millennial take on the mid-60s "Jack Laughter & Mademoiselle Sigh".

Though he'd later focus on the end-times metaphors, here Fay enchants with earthly fragility, proclaiming on "Garden Song," "I'm planting myself in the garden/ Believe me/ Between the potatoes and parsley/ Believe Me / And I wait for the rain to anoint me" and then conjuring frost, greenflies, spiders, and maggots on the way to unpacking lasting relations. Throughout countless absolutely stunning pieces, Fay's gloribund voice, pristine piano, and brilliant melodies transcend tape crackle with a lonesome joyousness as magical as the best sun-drenched work of Vashti Bunyan or Big Star. Musically, he moves between Baroque formalism, moody folksiness, Lennon/McCartneyisms, sugary hooks, and spiraling dark psych wanderings without sacrificing his charmed, tender lyricism. --Brandon Stosuy

Simon Finn: Pass The Distance [Mushroom Records; 1970; r: Durtro/Jnana; 2004] A black-magical Devendra Banhart in a different time/place long before this freakfolk thing hit, the English bard Simon Finn released Pass The Distance , a sprawling, fractured, dense brew of dark acid-folk on Mushroom Records in 1970. Thanks to the hard work of Current 93's David Tibet and fellow admirers, the forgotten masterwork is back in print along with four (admittedly less interesting) additional rarities as well as liner notes by Tibet, Finn, David Toop, and Vic Keary of Mushroom.

Finn's somnambulant folks is expanded up and then exploded with the dense Astral Weeks x10 production and multi-instrumental playing of Toop and Paul Burwell, who affix tabla, harmonium, flute, mandolin, accordion, violin, organ, electric bass, guitars, and various panning percussive bits to Finn's acoustic guitar and haunting, drunken-sailor, Roky Erickson-like soothsaying. The album's centerpiece is "Jerusalem", a six-minute, shiver-inducing crucifixion-of-Jesus exorcism that anticipates Current 93 as well as a bevy of lesser apocalyptic folkies. By its ecstatic, organ smashed final strains, you can't but help imagining Finn sweaty and in a trance, his guitar splintered and speaking different six-string languages. Perhaps on the verge of a deserved revival, in the past year he played a series of solo shows, some gigs with Current 93 and Six Organs of Admittance in Toronto and released an EP in connection with the events. Additional Canadian dates with C93, Six Organs, Antony, and Baby Dee are scheduled for the summer. --Brandon Stosuy

Hellbender: Con Limon [Reservoir; 1997] Before Harrison Haynes became Les Savy Fav's sprung metronome, before Al Burian entered his Marxist pyromaniac phase with Milemarker, the pair played in Carrboro, N.C. band Hellbender with guitarist/singer Wells Tower, who pretty much vanished from music after their demise. Con Limon is an infectious post-pop-punk record distinguished by its sharp, prolix lyrics and artfully cockeyed arrangements-- yeah, like Jawbreaker. "Long Distance Phone Bill Runner" is a classic dumped-and-pissed fistpumper, an acoustic ballad that lurches into a raging and infinitely quotable mid-section ("And I'm sorry if I scared your boyfriend/ But I won't let three thousand days slip by so easily again"), then climaxes in a fuck-all bitterfest ("Knuckles keep disagreeing with sheet rock/ A history of broken hearts, if all these spackle cans could talk/ Aren't you lonely yet? Goddam it!"). Also includes the catchiest and least Hellbenderish song Hellbender ever recorded, the swaggering "A Song About Some Girls": "This is a song that I wrote about some girls/ That I met at the beach/ Back when I had the jeep/ They smelled like Coppertone/ They turned the radio on/ The Silver Bullet Band came on." --Brian Howe

Julius Hemphill: Dogon A.D. [Freedom; 1972] Licensing issues have kept this record out of print, so Dogon A. D. remains a lost masterpiece of free jazz: alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill leads a quartet date influenced not only by the New York loft scene and gigs in R&B bands (like Ike Turner's) but by the African Savannah, which parches his and Baikida Carroll's horns but leaves them free to roam widely. The use of Abdul Wadud's pizzicato cello playing in place of a bass lets the music hop and lope across the sand, especially in the hard rhythms of side one, but side two rustles in the wind: "The Painter", on which Hemphill turns to flute, is a sublime group improvisation that swoops and coils in on itself, responsive to the slightest breath but frenzied by the players' interaction-- an absorbing example of finding beauty in a wide open space. --Chris Dahlen

Kayo Dot: Choirs of the Eye [Tzadik; 2003] Exotic even for Tzadik, Boston's Kayo Dot combines the proficiency of a chamber ensemble and the vulnerability of barely-hushed folk, with the math-borne power of art metal-- in a group whose touring ensemble includes two Asian violinists dressed in school girl costume and white denim, respectively. Horns and strings gild the acoustic sections of their music, a pastoral psychedelic sound that's akin to Ghost, while singer (and Yusef Lateef student) Toby Driver has even drawn comparisons to Jeff Buckley. But from fragile starts their songs build with the inevitability of tides, to crash in waves of noise and screaming ecstasy. --Chris Dahlen

Mainstream: Privilege EP [Nude; 1997] Somewhere in the same place lost socks and pens go, Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and Fred Noonan are listening to a pile of records by bands that simply vanished, never to be heard from again. The ironically named UK quintet Mainstream popped up with this EP in 1997 just as the Britpop corpse was bloating, apparently followed it up with a full-length and then disappeared just as quickly, though I don't ever recall even reading a tiny blurb about them back then, a time in my life when NME , Q , Uncut , Select , and a few other UK rags comprised about half of my reading material. (Remember when they said Terris were going to conquer the world?) How this made it to a New World used bin I'm not sure but the opening, anthemic blast and liquefied guitars of the title track have me lamenting their quick passing. And that's just the warm-up for the epic "Rolled on Southern Blues", a spooky six-minute piano-and-slide guitar slink through neon darkness and self-doubt whose hypnotic groove even had my mother asking what it was. I wonder what they're up to these days? --Joe Tangari

Eugene McDaniels: Outlaw [Atlantic 1970; r: Runt 2003] Outlaw introduced Eugene McDaniels to 1960s rock and the hippie movement: The singer of r & b hit "One Hundred Pounds of Clay" starts writing his own material, and his lyrics commit him to the counterculture. You can recognize the expressive growls and self-aware joshing that had snuck into his pop singles, though his stentorian tenor can sound out of place over folk-rock guitars. But even if the Mick Jagger-influenced vocals hadn't settled in yet, McDaniels soared and chilled, from the funky "Cherrystones"-- which he recently, at age 69, rerecorded as a single-- to "Reverend Lee", the pantingly erotic story of the temptation of a minister that has been covered by Roberta Flack and Natalie Cole. -Chris Dahlen

Medium Medium: Hungry, So Angry [Cherry Red; 2001] Best known for the 1981 single that is this compilation's namesake, Medium Medium cobbled together the decadent regurgitant of mainstream disco and fed it through a filter of Gang of Four's knotty funk and the Pop Group's acerbic, clawing production. Great bass lines make me weak at the knees, and Hungry, So Angry has so many: check the popping glides of the title track, the shimmy-cum-melody of "Nadsat Dream", and the scores of cinder block kicks, thumps and thuds found throughout. Most impressive, perhaps, is the stylistic and aesthetic variety-- something Medium Medium's more "important" contemporaries neither achieved nor, frankly, cared about-- seen in the album's descent from hard boxy funk to glittering atmospheric jams. --Sam Ubl

Gil Melle Quartet with Kenny Dorham & Hal McKusick: Gil's Guests [Prestige; 1956] I first knew Gil Melle as the guy responsible for the mind-blowing electronic soundtrack to the 1970 film Andromeda Strain , but during the bop era, he worked on his own brand of jazz he called "primitive modern," employing primarily low horns like tuba, trombone and his own baritone sax in his ensembles for a peculiar sound that also make early use of the guitar as a spatial instrument. This is definitely cool jazz, blowing along with the kind of swinging beat that seemed to fall out of the back pockets of guys like Max Roach (a one-time band-mate of Melle's but not featured here) in the 50s.

The solos are sharp and lyrical, and for an album with no superstar players, there are a surprising number of excellent improvisationsÐbassist Vinnie Burke was an extremely inventive player, making the most of the space Melle's compositions give him. The most stunning track is "Still Life", with its ominous intro, smeared with Joe Cinderella's nearly atonal guitar interjections giving way to a languid opening chorus and a suite-like composition that leaves plenty of room for tubist Don Butterfield's remarkable solo. CD bonus track "Funk for Star People" lives up to its name with a Mingusesque intro, noirish vibraphone and some stunning playing, sometimes featuring multiple simultaneous solos. He's overlooked, but Melle's jazz work seems to bear further scrutiny if this is any indication. --Joe Tangari

Metabolist: Hansten Klork [Drömm; 1980] UK experimental post-punks obviously under the influence of some pretty out continental Euro-rock-- Can, Faust, This Heat-- even Magma. The beats are fast and tight, like Pink Flag with added fuzz-bass and guttural, growling vocals. At this point, there is no CD reissue-- strike that, I saw one earlier this year in a limited edition of 100 copies for about $100. People, this is the kind of thing that makes file trading thrive and collectors sink into a well of self-pity. Metabolist were one of literally hundreds of great, lost post-punk and DIY bands (their pre- Hansten single "Identify" is punkier, their post- Hansten EP Goatmanaut is spacier-- I guess that makes them the proto-Black Dice), so here's to a campaign making them available again. --Dominique Leone

Attilio Mineo: Man in Space With Sounds [1962 Seattle World's fair; Subliminal Sounds 1998] Attilio Mineo, a jazz aficionado and TV theme composer, was commissioned in 1962 to provide the music to the Bubble-ator, a spherical, plastic elevator at the Seattle World's Fair. One would expect contrived, innocuous tedium. But something is greatly amiss from the start: The whirlwind prologue encounters ominous clanking metal and almost unbearably high pitches. Unnervingly, the "Gateway to Heaven" is abrasive and sinister.

I don't know much about theology, but surely most conceptions of paradise don't involve bloody razors, bloated pistons, and thousands of bleating cyborgs. "Here we are on the transit system of tomorrow," muses the cheerily inebriated narrator as Mineo orchestrates what sounds like a cartoon trolley mauling a family amidst battering static. It's the sort of thing one imagines Basil Kirchin, Bruce Haack, and Syd Barrett (maybe even George Clinton) listening to for inspiration: the soundtrack to a world's fair by someone who clearly thought the world was about to end. The only thing scarier than this album would be listening to it in a sealed, spherical elevator. -- Alex Linhardt

The Muffs: Happy Birthday to Me [Warner Bros.; 1997] This is where I misquote that meaty chestnut about the Ramones slapping together their love of Ronnie Spector and Nuggets rock with a baseball bat and killer bangs. This is where I talk about the Muffs playing behind Ronnie Spector for a pre-Christmas show at the House of Blues last year. This is where I try to avoid drawing hokey parallels between the Ramones and the Muffs, as such things would be insults to both bands-- the Ramones being one-trick thoroughbreds, the Muffs being two crackerjacks (and a jilted Jill) of all pop trades. But this is where I skillfully sidestep that tarpit and talk about songcraft, and how both those groups got some, and boy how they use it.

This is where I talk about Kim Shattuck's take-it-and-love-it voice, all smoky sweet and pinched like the Distillers' Brody Dalle doing Joan Jett karaoke with a cold and a case of the Buddy Holly hiccups. This is where I come off as an old fart and talk about the paucity of quality, good old-fashioned, 2:30, straight-forward verse-chorus-verse song writing nowadays as a reason you should like the Muffs. (This is where you Guided By Voices fans take a timeout and let me finish.) And this is where I trot out the old ‘neglected in their own time' guilt trip regarding the Muffs, a blue collar band in a world where showing up for work and doing your job (and doing it well) goes unappreciated-- my daddy done told me working a trade is just as honorable as working a boardroom.

This is where I tell you folks that, yes, the Muffs are still kicking around, and are still making the great music-- the group released a new album ( Really Really Happy ) last year. And this is where I tell you that, for some idiotic reason known only to the Powers That Be and a slew of spring cleaners, there are upwards of 70 used copies of Happy Birthday to Me at Amazon, starting at less than $5. Which means, of course, that you can buy two and give one to a friend. And this is where you see that, despite my hackneyed attempts at coercion, I mean well, and you give the Muffs a well-deserved chance. --David Raposa

Oval: Wohnton [Ata Tak; 1993] The first Oval album is rarely discussed as part of the project's legacy, but in some ways it's as forward thinking as anything else bearing the name (you might say that Wohnton is Oval's Ralf & Florian ). What Oval anticipated in 1993 was not just the fetishization of digital noise (the signature skipping CDs are here) but also how glitches might be combined with songcraft and the human voice. Hearing Wohnton now, it's clear that Markus Popp's exceptional 2003 collaboration with vocalist Eriko Toyoda as So was in fact a return to his roots. Members of German new wave band Der Plan sing on nearly every track here (sometimes badly, it must be said), and guitar noise and live drums compliment the electronics. When one takes into account the puny CPUs of the early 1990s, the variety of sound is particularly striking, but the real highlights transcend chronology. When song, voice, and technology congeal together just so on "Allesin Gedanken" Oval manages a "Video Killed the Radio Star" poignancy. --Mark Richardson

Lee Perry: The Upsetter Shop, Vol. 3: Baffling Smoke Signal [Heartbeat; 2002] Over the past few years it has sometimes seemed as though new compilations of vintage Lee "Scratch" Perry rarities and outtakes appear virtually every month, further muddying the waters of what is already one of music's most unruly discographies. More than a few of these collections have been of dubious quality (not to mention legality) but Baffling Smoke Signal is one of the true keepers. Dating from 1976-78, the dozen songs gathered here represent Scratch at his creative peak as a producer, recorded not long before he shut down his legendary Black Ark studio. Most of these tracks were previously unreleased on CD, and several of them belong to the inner ring of Perry classics. There's an extended alternate mix of the Congos' exquisite "Ark of the Covenant" that for my buck tops the Heart of the Congos original, several unearthed gems from The Upsetters, as well as Scratch's bizarro title track which memorably critiques the Vatican's process for pope selection (!). Though there may be other Lee Perry anthologies more detailed or exhaustive, there aren't many as consistently satisfying as Baffling Smoke Signal . --Matthew Murphy

Psycho-Baba: On the Roof of Kedar Lodge [Japan Overseas; 2001] Japanese band led by sitar player Mhayow and, on this album, joined by Boredoms members Yoshimi and Hira. And guess what: This is better than almost anything anyone from the Bore camp has done since Vision Creation Newsun . What we have is minimal, electronically-enhanced tropicalia and primal techno, featuring glo-beam percussion that is the perfect aural foil to a world infested with the koldest electro imaginable. I was pretty disappointed by Boredoms' Seadrum/House of Sun in 2004, largely due to hearing this album and realizing that they had little excuse for treading water (or even worse, issuing four-year old music as new stuff!). Anyway, this is still very much in print, and I urge any of you craving some of that super drum circle magic to check it-- despite the awful band name. --Dominique Leone

Red Balune: "Maximum Penalty" (single) [MCCB; 1978] DIY/theater outfit (the) Red Balune were formed by ex-Henry Cow reedist Geoff Leigh and his wife Cathy Williams while the pair were living in Holland. Leigh had also worked with This Heat drummer Charles Hayward in a short-lived band called Radar Favourites, and the Red Balune sounded like the frenzied, eclectic take on post-punk you might expect from someone given his background. However, "Maximum Penalty" was Williams' tune, and featured most of Henry Cow backing her up through damaged reggae and histrionic art song not far removed from Art Bears. Hopefully, in the near future, someone will reissue all of the Red Balune's stuff on CD (ReR USA is reissuing some other Leigh projects this year), but until then you'll have to either piss off the RIAA via illegal download or scour eBay for the vinyl. --Dominique Leone

Sebastian the Guard Dog: Sebastian Speaks! Your Watchdog on a Disc [Grr-r-records; 1980] This is the best 100 cents I've ever spent-- its utilities are endless. Sebastian is a German Shepherd that barks, growls, whimpers, huffs, and grumbles for over 30 minutes on both sides of this record. He is a poor man's guard dog, you see. "He is an awesome defender," the liner notes boost, "although he never wantonly attacks, woe to be the foolish intruder who doesn't heed Sebastian's warning barks, his spine-chilling growl-- as menacing as the "clack" of a shotgun being cocked." If you leave your castle or see a crowbar's flash, you simply crank this up on the hi-fi. However, when the invader discovers that he feared a slab of vinyl, that situation is left up to you and your personal savior to resolve. Still, there are other novel uses: A masochistic Walkman soundtrack, a road rage inducer for freeway gridlock, or party repellant for those who only came for the free booze. --Cameron Macdonald

Dmitri Shostakovich (Emerson Quartet, performers): String Quartet No. 8 [Deutsche Grammofon; 1999] They say Russian-born composer Shostakovich's string quartets are the finest examples of the genre in the 20th Century, and his eighth is the most popular. Well, sue me for not getting around to it until 2004. I'm sure he'd be upset, but then he was a pretty morose guy anyway, what with Stalin all up in his face about making music that was supposed to be easier for the masses to understand. What old Dmitri would do was start the thing very innocently, with nice, slow minor chords, and then put a bunch of crazy stuff in the middle, when the government suits in the audience had dozed off. The cool thing was that even the stuff he supposedly wrote to be "simple" was achingly beautiful, and the crazy stuff was just as amazing-- kind of like Ruins or Hella minus the drums and distortion. Seriously, one day, someone is going to figure out that cellos were playing most of the best riffs of the last hundred years. (Bonus fact: you can get this for about $3 used-- it was only issued as a promo for a box of the entire set of 15 quartets.) --Dominique Leone

Skip Bifferty: The Story of Skip Bifferty [Castle; 2003] When I exhausted my Nuggets boxes, I sought out Skip Bifferty. Their late 1960s psych-pop had the requisite echoes of Revolver and Pet Sounds -- sweet made-for-headphones harmonies abound-- but their crunchy riffs and confident swagger put them on par with The Creation. This two-disc compilation culls together the band's only album, released in 1968, along with bonus tracks and live BBC sessions. Opener "Money Man" is an instant classic well deserving of canonization. At the very least, it's better than The Beatles' George Harrison-composed "Taxman", which it vaguely resembles. The other songs from the original record have a similar hard-charging charm, going over the psych deep-end only on "Guru", which sounds just as a 60s track with that title should. The live tracks leave something to be desired, though, likely appealing just to the most avid collectors. But for saner psych-loving souls grown tired of the Pretty Things and not yet aware of The Moon, the first disc of this set and its handsome packaging are still worth the price. -- Marc Hogan

The Softies: It's Love [K; 1995] The Softies' debut is all acoustic guitars, snowflake-fragile melodies and holding hands. My 14-year-old self now owes me a wedgie, but I spent last winter nestled with this Sacramento, California duo's downy cuddlecore. Singer/guitarists Rose Melberg (formerly of Tiger Trap) and Jen Sbragia combined to record other eminently huggable indie-pop outings, but they rarely topped this debut's quiet intimacy. For starters, the title track needs less than a minute and a half to render the constant idyllic breathlessness of new love through just two voices, a few chords and one gossamer guitar line. There's a Talulah Gosh cover, too. Current bands like Camera Obscura, Dear Nora, and the Owls owe much to this group's disarmingly simple approaches to melody and everyday lyrics about love's peaks and valleys. More recently, Sbragia has released albums with the All Girl Summer Fun Band, but there's little better than It's Love for a frosty January Sunday morning spent gazing dumbly into the eyes of your favorite person. --Marc Hogan

The Tapes: Party [Passport; 1980] The Tapes come off like a hybrid of A Certain Ratio and Thomas Dolby, producing spasmodic disco-punk that cloaks satirical (and often moronic) critiques of cultural and commercial progress. (See, in particular, "The Mating Season" and "Inside Out".) The lyrics have apparently been penned by a more obvious and bitter David Byrne: "You ain't really into fast cars/ Then you're really into nothing at all/ Ooh, isn't it great hanging out with the right crowd?/ Drinking highballs in the sun/ Rub it in again" ("Into Action"). But Party displays an eccentric propensity to co-opt alien genres and odd tempos, developing the stomping beats into lengthy jams replete with filthy ambient tinges. "Point Eighty-Eight" even traverses the obscure territory between new-wave and grunge. An album that conveniently prefigures our current DFA addictions, Party has all the requisite synthetic beats, dented guitars, and deadpan vocals to still make it fashionable (however ironically). --Alex Linhardt

Various Artists: Early Japanese Electronic Music (1953-1956) [EARlabs mp3 release; 2004] A swift kick to the head for all those who thought Europeans invented tape works, Early Japanese Electronic Music (1953-1956) collects the output of Toshiro Mayuzumi, Makoto Moroi, Toru Takemitsu, and Yoshio Hasegawa. All the pieces were recorded at one Tokyo studio, and the resulting mélanges are vastly more playful and personable than the somber works of their French counterparts. Takemitsu's three compositions turn shouts, coughs, and yawns into operatic carousels of anguish and euphoria, while Hasegawa's half-hour "The World in the Jar" pits a full orchestra against one unruly theremin. But Mayuzumi is the real star. His "X, Y, Z" trilogy blasts phantasmagoric radio themes over revving motorcycles, forlorn brass bands, and morse-code beats. Later, we discover that even amidst the relative placidity of the 1950s, Mayuzumi couldn't resist the temptation to loop recorded bong hits, jungle field recordings, and cartoon slapstick effects into a sweaty götterdämmerung of simultaneous orgasms. Literally. On purely technological terms, it's beyond brilliant; it scarcely seems feasible. Culturally, it's astonishing that anyone could be permitted to produce these spellbinding encomiums to sex and anarchy. -- Alex Linhardt

Various Artists: Fort Worth Teen Scene, Vol. 1-3 [recorded: 1964-67; Norton; 2004] After the mounds of Nuggets , Rubble , Pebbles , and Dirt compilations, isn't it time to give this whole garage thing a rest? Don't we get it already? But these three albums, collecting material between 1964 and 1967, are uniformly superb (evading all the sound-quality problems of prior attempts at cataloguing the Texan scene). This is at least partly due to the bands' ravenously bizarre behavior. Based on these documents, we must conclude that three-quarters of the Fort Worth population wandered up and down the streets all day, naked, drunk, and yelling at the sun. The Cynics compare their mothers to steam engines; Jack and the Rippers fantasize deliriously about killing innocents; The Snowmen unremittingly berate Willie Hammond's garbage men; and The Barons just sound like their parents make them play in a dumpster out back. Has there ever been a more controversial pop song than Larry and the Blue Notes' "The Night of the Sadist"? "I'll remember till the day I die/ He grabbed my throat/ I could feel the blade of his knife/ I clutched his hand because I knew he would take my life." Jesus Christ! Imagine Roy Orbison and Eric Burdon tossed in that sedan from Mystic River . Simply insane. I'm now afraid of my own ears. -- Alex Linhardt

Various Artists: The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [Shanachie; 1985] Most people know this album for its historical importance-- as the record that brought South Africa's vibrant township music to a worldwide audience. But The Indestructible Beat of Soweto is also phenomenal, and brilliantly true to its title. The mbaqanga style, which appeared in a slightly filtered form on Paul Simon's Graceland , is all about that indestructible beat, and here you get five or six of the greatest basslines ever recorded, mixing with airtight drumming, guitars like rivers, gritty vocals and flowing accordion. Nganeziyamfisa no Khambalomvaleliso raps like a madman, Ladysmith Black Mombazo flex their heavenly choral muscles, Johnson Mkhalali gives up a guitar workout for the ages, and no track disappoints at all.

Amaswazi Emvelo's "Indoda Yejazi Elimnyama" even uses a vocoder to play the man who harasses the song's protaganist for money! The joy of the music belies the naturally dark subject matter of the lyrics, which address backstabbing, gossip, corruption, toil in the mines, jealousy, intimidation and, well, how great it is to be in a band. This music was made by some of the most repressed people on earth. Thank God their spirits could not be denied. -- Joe Tangari

Various Artists: Yee-Haw! The Other Side of Country [QDK Media; 2001] QDK Media's back catalog is generously padded with exploitive kitsch like Porn to Rock and Russ Meyer soundtracks, so perhaps this compilation of late 1960s-early 1970s country-rock obscurities was assembled with irony in mind. But if you ignore the hokey Roy Rogers title and artwork, you'll find this to be a treasure trove of post-Gram Parsons cosmic cowboys, desolate stoner folk, and miscellaneous damaged Americana. Though such tracks as Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck's chaotic "Kill the Pig" or Spur of Moment's "Don't Ever Trust a Woman" (next line: "with your dope") are worthwhile primarily for their comedy value, others burn with the same majestic glow which lit The Gilded Palace of Sin or Skip Spence's Oar. Highlights? Try Bluebird's dusty "Going to Nevada", or the Wilson McKinley's irresistibly catchy "Last One Asleep". Best of them all is the extraordinary countrypolitan funk of Dennis the Fox's "Piledriver", on which Dennis uses his laconic Fat Elvis drawl to exalt "a mean mother-trucker of a girl" before the female back-up singers swoop in to hi-jack the payload. It's enough to make you question a world where Kenny Rogers gets to make five movies based on "The Gambler", while Dennis the Fox gets squat. Where, I ask you, is the justice? --Matthew Murphy

Daniel Viglietti: Daniel Viglietti en vivo [Chant du Monde; 1973] Daniel Viglietti, the Uruguayan activist and Nueva Canción songwriter, was incarcerated by the military in 1972. Soon thereafter, he was exiled to Argentina. This recording is one of the first shows after his imprisonment, and it speaks volumes about his sincerity, tenacity, and talent. Alone with his guitar, Viglietti alternates expertly between hysterical fragility and stoic serenity. At his best, he's revelatory; at worst, his songs are effortlessly charismatic and earnest. On "Por todo Chile", it's difficult to escape the impression that you're witnessing Viglietti transform, mid-song, from a confused skeptic to the voice of a generation. The high points are "Nuestra bandera," a veritable national anthem of unbridled anger and begrudging forgiveness, and "Cielito del calabozo", a luminously elegant poem that begins in an unaccompanied whisper and thickens into a ferocious stampede. -- Alex Linhardt

Voigt/465: One Faint Deluded Smile [Radio One; 2000] Australian post-punk band from the late-70s had most of their recorded work issued on CD on this compilation, which is now sadly out of print. However, diligent music fans still know where to look, right? (hint: bid or "steal," right?) These guys and gals were something like a psychedelic meeting of This Heat, krautrock and the Homosexuals, with a healthy dose of that good old English-born DIY spirit thrown in. A more obscure touchstone would be Family Fodder, whose knack for whimsical experimentation Voigt/465 share. Sometimes their raw enthusiasm gets the better of their raw execution, but they're never lacking ideas or fun tunes. --Dominique Leone

David S. Ware: The Freedom Suite [Aum Fidellity; 2002] Ware's reinvention of his hero Sonny Rollins' Freedom Suite is respectful but new; he updates it to modern America and plays with an urgency to match the scorched red, white and blue on the cover. Compared to Branford Marsalis' faithful and almost contemporaneous take on the piece, Ware renders it as fire music of a kind rarely heard since the 1960s, blowing with conviction, anxiety and finally, triumph. William Parker and Guillermo E. Brown batter and swing with exactly the right openness, while Matthew Shipp contrasts the analytical tone of his recent own albums by meeting Ware's drive. Though admirable as a jazz recording and a tenorman's tribute to Rollins, The Freedom Suite is a statement that should be heard beyond the academy. --Chris Dahlen

The Young-Holt Unlimited: Soulful Strut [Brunswick; 1968] There was a time after hard bop morphed into "soul jazz" and then into instrumental R&B when a band of ex-jazz players could make a good living and score an occasional hit playing funky feel-good instrumentals (see Quincy Jones in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially Walking in Space .) Though I remember hearing the single "Soulful Strut" occasionally on AM radio in the 70s, I have to admit I first internalized as the backing loop to the terrible early-1990s Beastie Boys B-side "Mike D is in Love". After tracking down a vinyl copy of this record everything I always loved about this song came flooding back: the cheerful all-American horn hook, the behind-the-beat drumming, the supremely swinging one-handed piano banging out the melody. Happily, the rest of the record is cut from the same cloth, even if nothing quite matches the immortal high of the title track. But then, very few songs do. --Mark Richardson